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It has been purported by financial researchers and alternative media outlets that there are individuals whose net worth would dwarf whoever tops the Forbes Rich List at any given time – net worth the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or Carlos Slim Helu could only dream about.

This may be hard to fathom, but it’s important to consider two points when analyzing the finances of the global elite.

Firstly, without being able to inspect the bank accounts of billionaires, Forbes and similar Rich List publishers can only make crude guesstimates of individuals’ true worth. As a result, their lists are anything but official and their accuracy is questionable – something the billionaire community is quick to point out.

Secondly, beyond those individuals and sums mentioned on the Rich Lists, there exists what is often referred to as invisible or hiddenwealth. This involves non-disclosed fortunes that are virtually impossible to detect.

We examine this in some detail in our book THE ORPHAN CONSPIRACIES: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy.

Here’s an exceprt from the book:

The planet’s invisible wealth is comprised of undeclared income stashed away in offshore tax havens and Swiss bank accounts, secret Old World money and black market economies in which criminal enterprises conduct their business.

The criminal enterprises referred to include illegal drugs and arms dealing. One such arms dealer is Saudi Arabian Adnan Khashoggi who some banking and financial commentators estimate had a massive personal fortune of between US$2 trillion and US$7 trillion in the 1980’s.

However, the world is still waiting for its first official trillionaire, and Khashoggi’s fortune was only ever estimated by Forbes and the likes to be worth between $400 million and several billion. If the rumors of Khashoggi’s multi-trillion dollar personal fortune were true then there’s an extremely wide gulf separating unofficial and official estimates of his wealth.

The 2005 feature film Lord of War, directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Nicolas Cage and Ethan Hawke, is said to have been inspired by Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Like Khashoggi, Bout is rumored to have amassed a huge personal fortune impossible to estimate. Cage’s character, a Ukranian-American arms dealer, is shown in the movie to be above the law with apparently unlimited money and resources.

Blockbuster inspired by another wealthy arms dealer.

Former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos is another individual strongly rumored to have profited from the black market. As mentioned in chapter 6, many who have investigated Marcos, including politicians in the current Philippine government, say much of his wealth was secured from discoveries of Yamashita’s Gold. As the existence of those treasures was never acknowledged by any government, it’s conceivable President Marcos could have amassed a large fortune impossible to trace or estimate. Some investigators say his secret bank accounts amounted to trillions of dollars.

Ferdinand Marcos…worth trillions of dollars?

If this sounds totally unbelievable, consider the television interview Imelda Marcos gave in 2009 for the BBC TV travel series Explore. While being filmed inside her lavish home in the Philippines, Imelda told BBC presenter Simon Reeve that her late husband was heavily associated with gold mining companies and also traded in gold.

Imelda Marcos…happy to spill the beans.

The former First Lady then presented Reeve with an official document. Although she would not allow the document itself to be filmed, Reeve confirmed it was a Certificate of Deposit made by Ferdinand E. Marcos in a bank in Brussels, Belgium, for the amount of Nine Hundred and Eighty Seven Billion United States Dollars. For those who don’t have a good math brain, that’s only 13 billion short of a trillion bucks.

If true, this sum in Marcos’ Belgium bank account alone would be almost 13 times more than Bill Gates’ total current fortune. The legacy of the former president becomes even more staggering when considering that this was just one of his bank accounts; the Philippine government has confirmed through investigations of its own that Marcos had many such secret accounts in banks all over the world.

Sticking with the idea that there are individuals worth far more than the names topping official rich lists, some say Queen Elizabeth II is one of the wealthiest people, if not the wealthiest, in the world. In our spy thriller The Orphan Factory we run with this theory by referring to secret Royal assets and undeclared income of unimaginable proportions.